Frank Stajano's Introduc(k)tion

Hello everybody and thanks for making this list the high-quality forum
that it is! I've only discovered it recently and I think I've found the
Holy Grail. I was sure that there were other people in the world who
loved the Disney comics just like I do and I was longing to find some to
correspond with...

As this is my first message to the list, custom dictates that I start
with an introduc(k)tion. So here it goes.

My name is Francesco Stajano, generally known as Frank. I am Italian but
I've been moving around quite a lot; I lived in Belgium for four years in
the '70s and I've been in Cambridge, UK, since 1992 (no, that's not
university, I did that in Rome; this one in Cambridge is a permanent
real-world job). English is my third language after Italian and French.

Like all of you on this list I am an enthusiastic Disney fan. I learnt to
read at age three (STRICTLY ALL-CAPITALS, OF COURSE) thanks to Topolino,
the Italian Mickey Mouse comic. While at primary school one of my most
prized possessions was a small booklet that other Italians on the list
won't fail to recognise, "Vita e dollari di Paperon De' Paperoni" ("Life
and dollars of Scrooge Mc Duck"), a black and white paperback with some
great Barks stories including "A Christmas for Shacktown", "Uncle Scrooge
and the Seven Cities of Cibola", "Only a Poor Old Man" and "Back to the
Klondike" (censored, of course, although I had no idea that it was). At
the time I couldn't tell what the actual difference was (I naively
believed that all the Disney comics in existence had been written by a
gentleman named Walt Disney), but I very definitely felt that these
stories were special compared to all the other ones. When aged 9 or 10 I
got hold of a huge volume (for comparison: the format was slightly larger
than that of the blue CBL volumes with which you are probably familiar)
with more Barks stories: "Io, Paperone" ("I, Scrooge"). Again, these were
"the special stories". Among the most prized comics I had at the time
were also some Gottfredson reprints (that was the "Il Topolino d'oro"
("The Golden Mickey Mouse") series), including the Dr. Einmug "Island in
the Sky" one and "Mickey Mouse Outwits the Phantom Blot". In all fairness
I must admit that, while I found them fascinating, I was a bit scared by
the Gottfredson stories! Barks was gentler, more reassuring: the only
Barks story that I ever found frightening was "The Old Castle's Secret",
which despite that was one of the ones I liked best. And, as well as
these golden oldies, I had lots of "plain" Italian Disney comics, which I
all knew almost by heart: you could show me the cover and I would tell
you the stories inside.

At that time my family moved to Waterloo, Belgium. As a sort of
compensation for having left all my schoolfriends behind, I was granted a
subscription to Topolino. A couple of years later this was stopped, on
the grounds that I was a grown-up and I was not supposed to have that
childish passion for comics, and all that sort of rubbish (sounds
familiar to you? I hope not...). But the worst was yet to come: when, a
couple more years later, we came back to Italy, my father obliged me to
get rid of almost all my comics (!) because we couldn't afford to carry
around all that junk (!!) and the new house was smaller anyway. Sigh! So
this started a sad, dark Disney-less age that lasted for several years.
(With hindsight I might say that it was a good thing that this happened
at that time, as the late '70s and early '80s were a comparatively poor
period for the Italian production of Disney comics.)

Many years later, when I was at university, I once found a second-hand
comics shop with piles of "Topolino" in the back room. So I bought a few.
You may guess the rest. You can't separate what Destiny once joined...
Over the years, I bought back most of the comics that I had had to give
away in Belgium, plus tons more. Back to full-time Disney passion again!
Only, now I had a more "adult" perspective: I could tell the various
artists apart (although I could only assign "Dances-With-Wolves"-style
names to them, because the publisher didn't print the credits) and I
liked to indulge in comparative studies of various reprints of the same
story to find out, e.g., what the original format of the pages was, what
bits had been added and what bits had been edited out from a translated
edition and so on. I tried to assign a rough date to a story from the
shape of accessories like telephones and cars... That's when I started to
call myself, jokingly, "filologo disneyano", a Disney philologist. When I
got into modems and bulletin boards I inserted this description in my
signature and it has remained there since. It once upset somebody, a
comics collector I met on a bulletin board who claimed that _he_, if
anyone, should be the one "wearing" this title. He hadn't realised that
"filologo disneyano" does not have a definite article in front of it; I
am not claiming to be "THE" Disney philologist, just "A" Disney
philologist -- just like the words "research engineer" on my business
card shouldn't be taken to mean that I am the only person in the world
with that qualification. Rest assured that, whenever I meet other people
who are themselves Disney philologists, I am all too excited about it!
That's why I am so happy I found this mailing list which, by what I've
seen from the monthly digests, has a very high S/N ratio and a high
density of dedicated comics lovers.

Let's now get more specific about my Disney preferences and knowledge
(the Disney comics world is so large that most of us only know specific
areas of it: I look forward to learning a lot more thanks to you all). I
know the Italian production rather well. There has been so much of it,
lately (more new authors than I can recognise), that not all of it is up
to the highest standards; but there are still top-notch stories from
selected authors coming out at a steady pace. The Italian artist who I
think has been doing best in 1995 is definitely Massimo De Vita. There
are also some *VERY* gifted newcomers, but I'll talk about these in later
messages. I love Barks, of course, to me the best Disney author ever (the
greatest joy in my life was to meet him in London in 1994 -- he even
signed my old "Io, Paperone" book! There's a picture of him on my web
page), and Gottfredson. I am not thrilled by the current French and
Brazilian production (although I like the B-stories with Fethry Duck's
nephew-- what's his name in English?) and don't know much about the D-
and H- stuff.

I only discovered Don Rosa's work last year, when I went to a computer
conference in America; I hoped to fill up on comics but didn't have any
spare time to look for the right shops, so I came back with only ONE (can
you believe it!?) comic, bought at the airport. Luckily it had part of
the "Life of Scrooge" saga in it. That's how I got to know Don's stuff.
At first I didn't like the art too much (too un-Disney: with all that
woodcut-like inking it felt more like a "Where is Wally?" book than a
duck comic) and I also felt it was a bit cheeky and assertive to want to
complete Barks' universe... But the story was good, so I was intrigued.
This year I went to Canada for another conference (the follow-up to last
year's, actually), and this time I took a few days off to be sure I could
fill up on comics. And I sure did. Just before that, I had been to
another conference in Milan and I had found the new series of "If", with
an article by Fabio Gadducci describing Don's work and mentioning this
list (they managed to screw up the Internet address by the way...). The
"Return to Xanadu" story sounded fascinating. You bet that, in Toronto, I
especially looked for comics containing Don's stories!

I am a collector of stories, not of comics per se, and I've had some
heated flame-wars with people from the opposite camp. I accept and enjoy
reprints instead of originals if they are faithful and of reasonable
quality. I was pleased to read Harry Fluks' introduc(k)tion which
expresses a similar point of view. Don's "The Money Pit" story from
Donald Duck Adventures (Disney) #1 is also close to my feelings, with
lines such as "They put their coins in plastic sleeves, and are even
afraid to TOUCH then for fear they'll be worth less to somebody ELSE! Hee
hee!" Well said Don-- we know you were actually referring to COMICS
collectors!

But this message is getting too long already-- time to stop. What about
non-Disney things? I'll be very brief on that. I am a computer person, by
passion and by trade (always good when the two go together, and you get
paid to do what you like...); in 1992 I wrote a rather successful book on
modems and communications (good news, it's free; bad news, at least for
most of you, it's in Italian); in 1994 I created the DOOM Honorific
Titles. For more information about me, including contact information and
PGP keys, you may visit my web page.
I add goodies from time to time. The
Disney pages
I have in mind may eventually make their long overdue
appearance too. If you only have text access to the net, try finger.